[[quoteright:250:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/necroscope.jpg]] ->'''Enter Freely, And Of Your Own Will.'''

''Necroscope'' is a series of UsefulNotes/ColdWar/[[{{Spy Fiction}} Espionage]]/[[{{Psychic Powers}} ESP]]/{{Vampire}} novels by Brian Lumley.

It is the 1970s and the UsefulNotes/ColdWar is at its height. Twitchy superpowers are poised to annihilate the other paranoid and twitchy superpower, and [[ApocalypseHow take the world with them]]. You can't get much more screwed than that... [[FromBadToWorse oh wait]], there are also vampires, necromancers and werewolves waiting in the wings to enslave or annihilate humanity (and willing to manipulate those governments to do it). Welcome to the world of ''Necroscope''. From the height of the cold war, into the future the world will be caught a long and drawn out conflict fought by government sponsored Psychics, Espers, and [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits oddly powered individuals]]. The opposition, pretty much the same, but you can also throw in the aforementioned supernatural creatures, a generous selection of mobsters, {{corrupt politician}}s, and [[TheMole traitors]].

----!!Tropes:* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Vampires = bad guys, always. Unless you have PlotArmor of course, but even then...* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Vampirisation happens to the good guys every now and again. Eventually, [[spoiler:Harry Keogh is subject to this as well]].%% * AnyoneCanDie: And how.* ApocalypseHow: Not earth for once, but the Vampire World through the wormhole was hit with a white hole causing at least a class 1 or 2. * ArcWords: ''"Enter Freely And Of Your Own Will"''. * AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence:** [[spoiler: Harry's]] ultimate fate.** Also that of [[spoiler: Moebius]].* AttemptedRape: The villain in the first book is almost raped by his female cousins at their aunt's bidding. It kind of messes him up. * BeautyEqualsGoodness:** Max Batu (ugly and evil), Ivan Gerenko (ugly and evil), Zek Föener (beautiful and good).** Averted in the case of Boris Dragosani, [[BeautyIsBad who is described as a very handsome young man.]] [[spoiler: Then zigzagged when he turns into a vampire. He becomes notably more ugly in his vampiric state but can change back to his human form at will.]]* BodyHorror: Oh god, where do we start? Probably most evident in his Vampire World books where it goes SerialEscalation.* TheColdWar: Especially early on, with the aforementioned complications of having psychics and vampires thrown into the mix.* CosmicHorrorStory: Oh yeah. Ironically, this series is closer to the trope in spirit than the majority of Lumley's Franchise/CthulhuMythos-related work.* CosmicPlaything: Harry, though he loses some sympathy when [[spoiler: he ascends to a higher plane and sends fragments of his spirit out to turn others (both his sons and total strangers) into other {{Cosmic Plaything}}s]].%% * CrapsackWorld* DeadPersonConversation: Happens frequently; it's kinda the whole raison d'être for the series.* DealWithTheDevil: Harry's deal with Faethor Ferenczy in book four does not end well.* DeathWorld: The vampire planet is definitely this. The vampires assume Earth is this.* DeusExMachina:** The end of ''Necroscope II: Wamphyri!'' where [[spoiler:Harry Keogh saves the day]].** Pretty much any book with a Necroscope in it ends like this. Except maybe [[spoiler:in Avengers. Still, everything will turn out for the best even in failure, as seen by the precog]].*** More like manages to salvage some small triumph from the utter wreckage of everything rather than victory in a meaningful sense though, as every book leaves humanity or/and our protagonists in a worse position than before.* DeusExitMachina: For most of ''Necroscope II: Wamphyri!'', Harry Keogh (otherwise a GodModeSue) is unable to bring his full powers to bear because his spirit is bound to the body of [[spoiler:his infant son, Harry Junior]].* DirtyCommies: While there are good and bad people on both sides of TheColdWar, the Communist side is very notably less virtuous, especially in the first two series.* DistantFinale: [[spoiler: The series as a whole ends with vampires managing to infect a vast proportion of the world's population, including the heroes, but an epilogue shows that after a millennium or so humanity ([[CreatorProvincialism specifically England]]) worked out a genetic cure]].* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Dear God, is it raining bridges. Too many incidences to count.** A couple of characters have bridges dropped on them, then are resurrected only to have yet another bridge fall on them. * EvenEvilHasStandards: Exile to earth is the fate for vampires that are too evil for other vampires. Yeah. And there is even a vampire ice Alcatraz for those that are worse than that. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Which our heroes melt]]. OhCrap.* FanDisservice: Things that would be AnatomicallyImpossibleSex in most series are just part of the BodyHorror in this one, thanks to vampires' shapeshifting abilities. [[VaginaDentata Things usually]] [[OutWithABang turn out badly]].* FromBadToWorse: Basically the entire series can be summed up as the "Vampire version of Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion."* Gothic Punk: mixed with a bit of Steam Punk, this is the vibe of the architecture and bio-machinery of the Starside Wamphyri, with their giant organ piano's and flyers with elaborate, ornate metal saddles.* GreyAndGrayMorality: Although often veering into outright BlackAndGreyMorality or even BlackAndBlackMorality, especially when vampires are involved.%% * HeterosexualLifePartners: Ben Trask and Ian Goodley.* HopeSpot: The last book of the Vampire World trilogy lets the characters and readers believe the vampire threat has been destroyed for good. The fact that it's not the last chronological installment should clue you in on how well ''that'' went.* IHateYouVampireDad:** The Wamphyri tend to detest their vampire fathers, because they're sadistic and even incestuous. Not least because the turning process is essentially rape with a side-order of BodyHorror, or as the luckless Dragosani finds out: [[spoiler: "like sitting on a fountain of acid".]] ** Vampires also ''love'' eating each other, even more than eating humans, so they tend to keep their progeny around just to feed off them, (and the progeny would feed off their creator if they could, so there's no love lost there).* ISeeDeadPeople: The pathway to ultimate power in the setting.* InstantPeopleJustAddWater: It's possible to raise the dead by first reducing their bodies to dust before doing the magic.* KillItWithFire: The most reliable way to dispose of vampires, although the ashes are still suspect.* Kleptomaniac Hero: Harry does an awful lot of stealing, mostly of weapons.* LovecraftianSuperpower: True Wamphyri can reshape flesh and bones (both theirs and others') like Play-Doh. [[BodyHorror And they're both very imaginative and very sadistic]].* MagicMushroom: The mushrooms growing on a vampire's grave can vampirize you.* TheMasquerade: The vampires generally have a vested interest in maintaining this and even have a proverb that ''"Anonymity is Synonymous With Longevity"'' (with a couple of minor exceptions). In the final two books the {{Big Bad}}s break this ''hard''.* MindRape: Used liberally by all sides. Virtually every main character gets the treatment at some point, and usually from their own allies.* {{Necromancer}}: A type of psychic who can commune with the dead... by horribly defiling their corpses and souls. Necroscopes don't need to be horrible to communicate with the dead, and are correspondingly better appreciated by them.%% * NiceJobBreakingItHero: Again, too many to count.* NothingButSkulls: The cover of every book features a grotesque skull (or pile of skulls).* OrganicTechnology: The Wamphyri make extensive use of this.* OurSoulsAreDifferent: Harry spends book 2 as a disembodied soul but for some reason is not considered dead.* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires are symbiotic/parasitic fungi. More specifically, they're infected with a kind of symbiotic leech that gives them superpowers and a thirst for blood. It also gives them disturbingly [[BodyHorror metamorphic flesh]] and makes them into total sociopaths. The only way to kill them is fire, beheading, or sunlight.* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: The Werewolves are vampires, or at least vampires whose leeches are descended from infected wolves.%% * OurWormholesAreDifferent: Type 3, see trope page for details.* PhantomZone: The Wamphyri see Earth as this, humanity has the vampire world as this.* PowerParasite: Harry Keogh, or Deadspawn, spends the entire book taking other people's powers (to be fair most of them weren't needing them since they were dead at the time) for the final confrontation with the BigBad in the alternate universe. ItMakesSenseInContext.* PsychicRadar: In the ''Necroscope'' novels people who have this "Talent" are called spotters, and are rarer even than regular Talents. * RandomlyGifted: How talents are handed out.%% * RedScare* RetiredMonster: Faethor Ferenczy, retired due to death. In this series that is no bar to being an active participant of course. His one attempt to come out of retirement, well, it does not go well for him.* {{Satan}}: Possibly appearing under the name Shaitan.* SealedEvilInACan: Once per book. From a werewolf encased in amber and resin for hundreds of years, to a Vampire Ice-Alcatraz (which the heroes melt [[note]]They do this to kill off one Vampire menace, and by doing so release a whole new one of even more evil, and worse, competent ones; [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice Job Melting It]][[/note]]).* ShoutOut:** "Enter freely, and of your own will" is a phrase with significance in the classic vampire novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}''.** The method of raising the dead by first reducing their bodies to dust before doing the magic seems to be a ShoutOut to Creator/HPLovecraft, who had a similar plot device in ''Literature/TheCaseOfCharlesDexterWard''.* SovietSuperscience: The USSR tries to put a DeflectorShield over the entire country, but instead accidentally rips Space-Time a new arsehole. Oh and turns the small hard-to-reach wormhole to the Vampire World into the equivalent of an expressway. * StableTimeLoop: Possibly the origin of the Wamphyri, as detailed in the fifth and sixth books. Shaitan, the first vampire, falls into the Vampire World after a great unspecified battle and breathes in vampire spores from a hideous corpse he finds in a swamp. As it turns out, [[spoiler: the corpse is that of the vampirized Harry Keogh, which got blown back in time due to a nuclear explosion near a wormhole... that also killed Shaitan's future self.]] ItMakesSenseInContext.* TailorMadePrison: The USSR treat the vampire world of Sunside/Starside as this while Sunside/Starside reciprocates. When the two sides work out it isn't...* TrilogyCreep: Started as a trilogy, now up to at least 13 books.* VillainProtagonist: Dragosani is this in the first book, which is at least half devoted to him.* WritersCannotDoMath: The math problems used to establish that young Harry is a genius are accurate enough, they're just not really impressive to actual mathematicians.** They may not be impressive to adult mathematicians, but from a more-or-less uneducated primary school boy?* YouCantFightFate:** The future is fixed; anything a prognosticator foresees ''will'' happen. The best you can hope for is that you misinterpreted the vision, resulting in a ProphecyTwist. Not only that, if you try to peek at your ''own'' future you are guaranteed to discover that you'll be dead in less than a day.** Not literally, though it happens the first time we see it done, but when Harry does it he finds out that [[spoiler: his life-ribbon is tinged red, and everything he's done to rid himself of vampiric taint is doomed to fail.]]